O'Reilly Digital Media

Related link: http://www.streetdeck.com

The company I work for, MP3Car.com released our StreetDeck software at CES a few weeks ago. It’s clever in that it uses gestures, not fixed-position buttons, on a touchscreen to control stop, next, rewind, and other functions of the navigation and media playback.
Next stop is the DEMO conference…

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Related link: http://cgi.ebay.com/BE-FIRST-TO-ADVERTISE-ON-ROCKETBOOM_W0QQitemZ5661816188QQcat…

This is awesome. The perennial question is “what is the videoblogging business model?”

Well here’s one of them: build an audience of over 100,000 viewers then sell one million ad impressions… on ebay.

I’ve snapshotted the ebay link here ; the ebay link will go away after a while.

How do you “monetize” YOUR blog?

Related link: http://www.antiphishing.org/

Yet another phishing email arrives, and it’s bugging me more and more just to hit delete or the Spam button. I’d like a toolbar item (or a Favorite to add to my browser toolbar) that does something a little more useful with them.

This morning’s message purported to be from Visa but the phony Visa url actually linked to an images subdirectory at www.sami-equipements.ch, which looks like a legitimate emergency equipment maker–I’m guessing someone has tucked a script inside that subdirectory?

I went to the US federal cybercrime site at http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ (phew! they ain’t spending taxpayer money on graphic design, that’s for sure) but it’s hard to just file a quick report and move on. They provide a guide to reporting here:

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/reporting.htm

But it features some dead links, and if you do get to a reporting form, it’s likely to be very long and to ask you for so much personal information you may not want to complete it.

Into the breach step various private groups, such as the Anti-Phishing Working Group:

http://www.antiphishing.org/

You can report phishing to them by sending an email to reportphishing@antiphishing.org. They list endorsements by Visa, eBay and a lot of other big firms.

Anyone got any other suggestions?

What’s your best anti-phishing link?

Related link: http://www.thetech.org

Today’s San Jose Mercury News (“the newspaper of Silicon
Valley”) has a front-cover story about one of the deep ironies in this
world-famous technopolis: The $113 million Tech Museum of Innovation
is tanking. Attendance dropped by half within three years of the museum’s
opening in 1999 and has remained flat. Revenue is also down by 50%, causing
an operating deficit last year despite 20 layoffs. (Staff size has fallen from
200 to about 120 in the last few years, the paper says.)

There’s some hope that the new CEO, who arrives in April, will be able
to turn things around, but based on what I’ve seen, the Tech will need
to make some drastic changes. Having lived in Silicon Valley for more than a
decade, I’ve made several trips to the Tech, including one with my father—a
renowned chemistry educator—and
two with my young sons. None of them wants to go back.

How could a science museum in the heart of Silicon Valley fail so badly? Its
mission statement sounds ideal:

To engage people of all ages and backgrounds in exploring and experiencing
technologies affecting their lives, and to inspire the young to become innovators
in the technologies of the future.

But the problem, as I see it, is that the exhibits just aren’t designed
for exploring and experiencing. There’s too little hands-on equipment
and far too many bland computer simulations. It’s just weird
to pay good money for a chance to run some cruddy 8-bit graphic demos on ancient
PCs. (Though my recollection is that the admission prices used to be about double
what they are now.) Instead of learning by doing, you’re forced to watch
science through glass.

Two exhibits in particular highlighted the benefits and challenge of making
science interactive. On my last visit, my 2-year-old son and I sat down to watch
a robotics demo. The star of the show, a late-generation Sony Aibo, could have
been a crowd-pleaser. But the poor robodog actually fell asleep! Prod and cajole
as his trainer might, ol’ Aibo refused to participate, just lying on the
floor, sulking.

Interestingly, the successful exhibit also showcased robotics. It had an irresistible
name like “Meet the Peanut Butter Robot.” When we climbed to the
museum’s third floor, we discovered that the PB Robot was actually a high
school student in a chef’s hat. He was standing behind a table with a
jar of peanut butter, a bag of bread, and a knife. To program him to make a
sandwich for you, you had to write instructions on a piece of paper.

The joy of the exhibit was that the Peanut Butter Robot interpreted everything
literally, forcing you to develop precise programming code if you wanted to
eat. For example, writing, “Put the peanut butter on the bread”
might provoke the robot to lift the jar and balance it on the loaf. There’s
a more detailed description of the demonstration here
(580KB PDF), but perhaps PB Robot was one of the workers who got cut, because
I never saw him again.

Every time I visit the NAMM
musical instrument show, I see more add-on hardware designed to make music
software tactile. Clearly technology is more inspiring when it facilitates interaction.
For the sake of future innovators, let’s hope the Tech Museum and other
educational institutions start to realize that as well.

What got you turned on to technology?

Related link: http://aclu.org/pizza/

This movie is very illustrative of where our database culture is going. I actually have a very high personal tolerance of privacy invasion, especially on an opt-in basis.

What will be funny is when we watch it and say, “I dont’ get it.” in about 5 years.

Of course if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I’ve got the VC’s lined up - who wants to join me in a startup to developing the application shown here?

Related link: http://www.elandigitalsystems.com/usb/u132.php

Finally, we’ll be able to use our EVDO cards via a USB connection!

Related link: http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/01/25/google.china/index.html

Just days after Google Inc. refused a US Justice Department demand to turn over data on its customers’ searches, the company has revealed it will cooperate with China in censorship. The Google marketing department is no doubt ready with a re-engineered company motto:

Just Be A Little Evil.

Maybe Google has in fact taken a cue from the US government, which also has a new motto: We Don’t Torture People (As Much As We Could).

This corruption of Google’s once idealistic mission points out an important trend to which we are all party: Increasingly, the commonweal is under the stewardship not of governments, not of citizens, but of large companies.

In the old days, the stuff of politics was physical property. Most contests, including, of course, wars, were ultimately about real estate. But as more value has come to reside in ideas and networks, political (not just economic) power has begun to shift to the corporate entities that own or control access to intellectual property. In the future, wars over physical territory are likely to be reserved for losers and terrorists. Grabs of information are where the high stakes action is likely to be.

Another area where you’ve got to admit our government is on top of the trend: We Data Mine You Because We Care.

The trouble is, none of us, and in particular none of the vote-deprived Chinese, voted for Google. And yet to some degree we are all becoming subjects of Google. Through gmail, Google currently controls all of my email messages, and yes, I am kind of uncomfortable about that. I won’t feel any better if Google ends up handing over search results to the Alberto Gonzalez Justice Department (Motto: We Put The Justification In Justice).

To protect democracy from creeping irrelevance, we’re going to have to work out new mechanisms of citizenship. To some extent the free market gives me a “vote” on Google’s behavior in that I can choose not to use gmail. But the market is not always all that free. To forego using all Google services would be to handicap myself, and if I wanted to vote similarly against Microsoft, I’d have a big problem.

Google may well occupy a Microsoftian position in the near future. Or rather, if Google is going to partner with entities like China, a position that could, in retrospect, make Microsoft look folksy.

Related link: http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/63/Were_Cracking_the_Neural_Code_the_Brains_Se…

“Chances are you have never heard of the neural code. And yet, from both a practical and philosophical perspective, the neural code is the most important remaining scientific mystery. Analogous to the machine code of a digital computer, the neural code is the software, set of rules, syntax, that transforms electrical pulses in the brain into perceptions, memories, decisions. A solution to the neural code could – in principle – give us almost unlimited power over our psyches, because we could monitor and manipulate brain cells with exquisite precision by speaking to them in their own private language.”

If we ever discover a human soul or other postulated independent consciousness, this line of research will not pan out, as the orders to the organism will not be coming from neural code. However, under the brain-as-a-system-bus theory, if such a soul exists then this research could also help find it, as the location of a supposed soul-to-brain interface would inevitably show up.

Can we corner consciousness with this line of research?

Related link: http://www.signalwide.com/

I need a 3W signal booster for my home. I remember when I had a 3W analog cell phone that couldn’t drop a call if I drove underground and wrapped my car in tinfoil. I met these guys at CES - put one of these in your home or car, and get the repeater going. It’s technically a mini-cell tower repeater I think.

 |Opening SFX - Birth of light. Energetic|
The web is beginning to look mighty good… but, where’s the sound?
 |silence|
Except for on-line games, radio stations and the occasional streaming song the web remains silent. In video game development, we believe audio is 1/3 of the gaming experience (the other 2/3rd’s: visual and gameplay.) My unofficial, unscientific, off-the-top-of-my-head survey tells me that 95% of websites offer no sound at all. The other 5% use Flash/Shockwave for intros and demos that have some sound. Why hasn’t audio kept abreast with video and graphics advancements on the web?

Some sites play tunes or offer a user-selected song to play while users explore. At FOX’s 24 you can play the theme song while exploring the TV hit.

 |cue theme song|
Cool. But once you change to another page - no sound. A page change on the web is like a channel change on TV — flip the channel

 |ka-chunk. stop theme|
and you’re in a completely different world.

 |Cartoon program SFX (e.g. Ed, Edd and Eddy, Dexter’s Lab)|
There have been several attempts to thwart this problem (you’ll have to go back into the Internet archives for info.

 |Sounds of setting the “Way Back Machine”|
Search for Headspace’s Beatnik player, Crescendo and SSEYO’s Koan.)

I don’t like interruptions in the flow of the experience as illustrated, but playing a tune is not what I’m really complaining about. Where are the interactive, integrated, sound events?

 |SFX examples: fresh, cool, subtle sound effects - be imaginative!|
Designed creatively, sounds tied to user actions can offer important clues for the user. But much beyond that, audible events promise cool enhancements to a user’s web experience - for instance an event that happens off-screen can tell the user of the event and it’s status. Note this: the vast majority of sound effects in film are created in post-production - tire screeches

 |short Porsche 911 tire screech around corner|
in that car chase or the clinking of glasses

 |two very short champagne flute clinks|
are done in a sound studio, well after shooting.

Why is sound such a no-go on the web? Have people thrown their hands in the air with current web technology? Will the new “Web 2.0″ technologies offer advances in web audio? Or do web designers figure most people are surfing from work and audio would give their covert activities away? Maybe no one has managed to design proper website sounds?

Heck, what are website sounds?

 |Hmmmm|

Recent discussions on a popular pro Sound Design forum have discussed this issue and most have voiced that they just don’t like audio on websites. I found this rather unsettling from a sound design group! Some have postulated that since our web activities encompass scanning for information we aren’t in the habit of taking it all in - like we do when we relax comfortably and experience a movie.

There’s nothing going on at the W3C to indicate people care about enhancing the web with sound.

 |Forest at Night. Crickets, occasional frog, etc.|
Or is there? (Is anybody really doing any work with SMIL?)

What do you think? Why don’t we have an aural web? Can web-sounds be a new paradigm for professional sound designers? Will new web technologies enable the web to make it past the silent-era?

 |Fade out Forest at Night…|

Related link: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051220_827695.htm

Good succinct summary of the anti-patent argument, including how VC’s look at patents and get duped by them.

In my series on downloads I looked at a couple of scenarios, based on traditional CD sales and iTunes sales, that indicated that the people who make music may end up making less money from downloads than they used to from CDs, even though CDs were not a great business to start with. Digital efficiencies have the effect of driving down prices, and the end of the trend may be music that’s worth next to nothing on a per unit basis. One possible outcome: Aggregators of that nearly free content may very well be able to make money, but small labels, and artists, may not.

My scenarios represented very small data samples. But they may be examples of a much bigger trend: a productivity crisis, one caused not by too little productivity, but by too much.

In the past, increases in productivity tended to be locally disruptive but broadly beneficial, a trade-off described by economist Joseph Schumpeter as Creative Destruction. When more efficient work produces more output per worker, some workers lose their jobs. But the overall increase in wealth creates more prosperity for everyone (assuming a roughly free and fair market), and more jobs. Those new jobs often required higher skills, but if displaced workers got training in those skills, they could end up earning higher wages. These days, telecommunications, computerized logistics and efficient transporation allow jobs to be shipped to lower-wage countries. Further down the line, automation eventually moves those jobs from low-wage humans to robots. On balance, though, if workers are being retrained for higher wage jobs, everyone may benefit.

But there may be a new problem, arising from the fact that with technology, each round of improved productivity causes the next round to come sooner. Because most of human history has been a story of scarcity, it’s our habit to assume that more and cheaper is always better. But as we see in many systems, a phenomenon that is benign when it happens at one rate can become threatening at a faster rate.

This kind of worry about the anti-human threat of technology is not new–when trains first started running, some feared that humans might be killed simply by moving at that speed. And so far, human adaptability has always triumphed, with life generally getting better for most people. For all the stresses of modern life, the average resident of the developed world is the healthiest, longest-lived, most prosperous person in the history of humanity.

But it seems to me there’s a natural limit to how fast people can learn how to do new jobs. If productivity improvements keep eliminating more jobs faster, the curve of productivity improvement will cross the curve of educational improvement, and that intersection could very well be a crisis point. It may be one we’ve already reached.

Much social tension in the US over recent decades has been a result of the divergence between the minimum educational level required by the average job and the level actually attained by a particular group of workers. In the 60’s, many African Americans, equipped with grade school educations from second rate schools, were left behind as factories moved to cheaper labor markets or became automated. African American men’s lost access to relatively well paid manufacturing jobs contributed to the decline of the cities, the break-down of families and a rise in crime. Later, whites with high school diplomas started to find that they couldn’t get good jobs, and we saw the rise of white supremacists and militias. Now many college graduates are struggling to find good jobs.

Meanwhile, the US economy has grown smartly, fueled by these technology-driven productivity gains. But as the overall economy has grown, we’ve seen a widening gap between the rich and everyone else: It looks like the value of an elite education (or really good social connections) has skyrocketed, while people below that level are being commoditized. Unemployment is low, but the unemployment percentage doesn’t reflect the many people who have given up looking for a job, the many people who are employed in low wage jobs.

Where does this lead? As more and more work can be done by machines, what do we do with the idled humans who can’t adapt fast enough? Pay them for not working, ending up with welfare for just about everyone? Or will we discover dramatically improved ways to educate people? Even if we do make that discovery, there will still be IQ limits to contend with–do people deserve to be poor just because they’re not brilliant? Or will people evolve in the direction of the very technology that poses the challenge? Ray Kurzweil argues just that in his new book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology: He believes that in the not too distant future we will merge with brilliantly intelligent computers and become, in effect, a new species.

Related link: http://www.i2partners.com/ideas/war-of-the-worlds-hollywood-opts-out-of-the-goog…

Good article on disintermediation (video over IP changing traditional broadcast models):

“Hollywood believes large-scale broadband video distribution would only destroy proven value, fail to provide alternative value, and alter a business model that is still far from being in decline. With near-total control of the most valuable program libraries and the business models governing their distribution, a shift towards broadband media will come largely on Hollywood’s terms and at an incremental pace.”

Related link: http://www.apple.com.itunes/

Getting ready for my day-long drive down to NAMM, I’ve been using iTunes 6.0.2 to burn some podcasts to CD, and I stumbled across some cool features. One of the podcasts, Spacemusic episode 31, was an AAC file with 16 embedded chapter markers. I figured it would transfer to audio CD as one unnavigable 65-minute track, but iTunes actually split it into 16 tracks. Excellent! (It would be even cooler if the program could export the names and durations of the chapters—or print them as a CD cover—but there’s always next rev.)

Ironically, Spacemusic switched back to MP3 format shortly after that podcast because so many listeners were unable or unwilling to play AAC files. Perhaps the MP3 spec will get a chaptering function eventually. The show’s host now provides section start times in the podcast’s description tag, so it wouldn’t be too hard to input them through, say, AppleScript and jump directly to the segment of interest.

Actually, I’d been wanting to do that for a while, so I just modified one of the scripts from my article “Turn Your Mac into an Audio Transcriber”:

tell application "iTunes"
set desired_minutes to display dialog "Set iTunes playback position to this many minutes:" default answer "0" with icon 1
set desired_seconds to display dialog "... and this many seconds:" default answer "0" with icon 1
set goToMin to text returned of desired_minutes as number
set goToSec to text returned of desired_seconds as number
set goToPos to ((goToMin * 60) + (goToSec))
set player position to goToPos
end tell

Paste this code into Script Editor, save it as a script (the iTunes Script folder, ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts, is a convenient place), and then run it. A window will pop up, asking you to enter the minutes. Then a second window will ask for the seconds:

When you enter that number, iTunes will jump to the location you specified. With a long audio file, that’s way easier than rummaging around with the playback position slider. And in conjunction with a streamripper like Audio Hijack, you could automate the process of extracting individual songs….

Other happy iTunes discoveries, anyone?

I was sure it was a bug. After I’d laid out my first
DVD project in iDVD 3, I went to add looping background music to the numerous
submenus. (The DVD contained more than 50 chapters.) Because I’d written
most of the music for the rest of the DVD at 105 beats per minute (bpm), I used
that tempo for the menu loops. That’s when I discovered that iDVD would
only set menu durations in whole seconds. And according to my Experimental
Tempo Calculator, two bars of music at 105bpm last 4.571 seconds.

I experimented with stretching the tempo to 96 and 120bpm, which generate integer
duration values (5 seconds and 4 seconds, respectively). But still, every time
the menu looped, there was an audible glitch. Because I had rendered the audio
loops in Ableton Live,
I knew they were sample-accurate (that is, exactly the specified duration),
so I assumed iDVD was causing the discontinuity. It was time to ship the disc,
so I left it at that.

Then I noticed something odd: Every other commercial DVD I played faded
out the menu music before the loop point. Could the looping glitch be a
limitation of the DVD format itself?

Yesterday at Macworld, I got a chance to ask DVD expert Bruce
Nazarian that very question, and he confirmed that the looping glitch is
indeed a format limitation. In order to create a seamless loop, the player would
need to read ahead and do some fancy splicing behind the scenes. Nazarian believes
the problem will might still exist in the next-generation HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats.

The need to fade out DVD menu loops is frustrating, but it’s another
good illustration that the challenges in digital media are usually equally divided
between technical and aesthetic issues. When I asked Nazarian what the optimal
fadeout length was, he said it should depend on the type of music and the effect
you want to achieve.

[Updated 2006-01-15 with Nazarian’s request to change “will” to “might.” —David]

Heard any good menu music lately? How long are the fades?

Related link: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8816

Part 1 of this series is here, Part 2 is here.

In Part 1 of this series I looked at how hard it is for an indie label to make money selling CDs. Part 2 was about how it can be even harder with iTunes. In this part, I talk about where all the money went, and about what new models, such as those based on the Long Tail, will have to be worth.

First of all, where’d the money go? As I mentioned in Part 2, even though iTunes eliminates a lot of a label’s expenses related to physical distribution, it may yield the label less money. That’s partly because iTunes, like other download services, unbundles the album format, allowing customers to buy individual songs. That’s great for customers, but given that the up front marketing costs to launch a new project are roughly equal for an album or a 99 cent single, it’s big trouble for labels.

In response to Part 2, teejay argued that because singles are so much cheaper than albums, people will buy more singles, and the increased volume will help make up for the lower price. I agree that more people are likely to buy a single, but I’m not convinced yet that the increase will be in the hundreds per cent, which is what would be needed to replace physical album sales (physical singles sales have become close to negligible). And given that cheaper digital production and distribution are leading to an explosion of new product, I’d expect the benefit from increased singles sales to be diluted by the availability of more releases, except in the case of big hits.

But there’s more to it than just unbundling. Comparing the numbers in Part 1 & 2 for CD sales vs. iTunes sales, I notice that the wholesale album price has gone down just over three dollars, from $9.50 to about $6.44 (depending on the retail price¹). That might seem logical, given the savings realized by dropping physical distribution:

But have a look at this line-up of figures:

Steve Jobs showed the record companies a way to reduce their expenses and convinced them to give almost all the savings to him.² There IS a reality distortion field! One begins to see why EMI and some other labels have begun arguing that Apple should raise its iTunes prices.

So that’s where the money went. For now, anyway, it looks as if labels have lost the advantage gained from increased distribution efficiency. So is there a way left for labels, in particular the indies, to make money? As Philipp and dannyo_152_redux have pointed out, reduced marketing expenses could be another route to profit.

This is also the promise of Wired editor Chris Anderson’s Long Tail model. Anderson says that in the digital economy hits will serve as entrees to similar non-hits that are further down the long tail of the sales curve. And he highlights the importance of filters, such as recommendations from trusted experts.

This kind of marketing can be close to free. But what’s it worth? And how much value does it have to make up? As I mentioned in Part 1, marketing expenses for indie albums that are attempting to compete in the mainstream are in the range of $100,000 to $300,000. Alternative indies can’t spend that much cash, so they do things like have their artists play lots of shows. But I’d guess that if you account for time and work, the investment is similar. I hope new forms of marketing can have comparable impact for less money, but I haven’t seen convincing details yet of how that will work. I’ll repeat what I said a little while ago in a post called “Beware Of Risk-Free Business Models”:

So far in business history, there’s been a requirement that risk and reward roughly balance… Many of the alternative models I’ve seen seem to be based on the assumption that merit is enough: people will hear good music and recommend it to their friends, who will want to buy it. But it’s at that point that the model appears to go risk-free… [the] marketing investment is the risk in the risk-reward equation. In particular, it’s the “impresario fee” for finding an artist that is extraordinary in some way and then doing all the things that have to be done to, in effect, modulate pop culture with the image and sound of this artist.

If there’s little or no risk behind a product, why will anyone want to pay for it? So far there have in fact been few money-making acts to emerge from the net, and there have by now been many attempts. It may be that the era of hit recordings is ending, as David Bowie³ and others have argued. Until now, only hits have made profits; the hope for the new models is that increased efficiencies will make non-hits profitable. But in order to make that work these models will have to overcome some powerful forces pulling in opposing directions–in particular, the conversion of music into a commodity whose unit value is approaching zero.

1. iTunes’ retail prices vary.

2. Apple is believed to make little direct net profit from music sales, but the value in iPod sales is huge. The money saved by switching to digital distribution will vary widely depending on the particular model. Running iTunes is apparently quite expensive, while P2P networks can spread expenses so thin they pretty much disappear.

3. ‘’Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity… So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.'’–New York Times, June 9, 2002.

Related link: http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_art_podcasting/index.html

My December 2005 cover story for Electronic Musician, “The Art
of Podcasting,” is now online
for free. (Looks like you’ll have to buy the paper version of the magazine
to see the graphics, though.) Strangely, there’s no link to the supplemental
material I created to enhance the story, although EM did faithfully render
a link to Example.com.

Anyway, seeing the article in print again made me recall an odd discussion
I had with Apple last year while I was researching the story. I had asked an
audio product manager if he could share some tips on how readers could use Logic
and GarageBand to create better podcasts, or even comment on the future of the
field. He seemed interested in helping, but said he’d have to run it by
PR first. The result: I was given just two URLs—to an iLife
page on recording a podcast with GarageBand and a bare-bones
tutorial on recording with QuickTime Pro.

I could understand the company’s being defensive of its product managers’
time with the press, but why turn down free publicity in one of the top music
technology magazines? Hmm…. Were they planning to announce a podcast
creation system at Macworld and hoping to deflect attention?

Here’s what I’m thinking: Rather than releasing a standalone app
called iCast or something, Apple will show a new version of GarageBand with
a “Save as Podcast” command. To further the integration, this GarageBand
3 will come with podcasting templates, including effects designed for voiceover
work and loops designed to work as “bumpers,” those musical transitions
between sections of a broadcast. For people with .Mac accounts, the podcast
files will be hosted on .Mac and automatically submitted to the iTunes Music
Store. (Though it would be interesting if Apple were to offer those services
for free in exchange for a percentage of sales made through the store.)

And the iPod will get a software update (and plug-in microphone) that turns
it into a usable field recorder, à la the M-Audio
MicroTrack.

Incidentally, Chris Adamson makes some great suggestions for other features
an Apple podcasting program should have at the end of this
insightful blog by Chuck Toporek.

So, what does Apple have up its sleeve?